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Re: hp-ux pam/kerberos authenication to AD without modifying the AD schema

 
Peter Heinemann
Frequent Advisor

hp-ux pam/kerberos authenication to AD without modifying the AD schema

Anyone have a way to do this?

ldap-ux isn't a candidate, because my understanding is that it requires a modification to the AD schema.

The problem stems from the 8 character limit for account names under hp-ux; in some cases the AD account against which we would authenticate isn't identical to the Unix account (since AD allows more than 8).

Not an issue on our Linux systems as they permit accounts greater than 8 characters.

I'm wondering if there's any way within the pam/kerberos (or other) suite to map the ux username to the AD domain account, but do it outside of AD.
6 REPLIES 6
Steven E. Protter
Exalted Contributor

Re: hp-ux pam/kerberos authenication to AD without modifying the AD schema

Shalom Peter,

My understanding is that what you want to do does require modification of the AD configuration and schema.

You might want to test NIS on a Linux server and see if it allows longer user ID's.

I hate NIS but it might help you out of this circumstance.

SEP
Steven E Protter
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Geoff Wild
Honored Contributor

Re: hp-ux pam/kerberos authenication to AD without modifying the AD schema

Are you talking about Samba or general authentication?

For Samba, see my thread here:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=949365

Rgds...Geoff
Proverbs 3:5,6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make all your paths straight.
Peter Heinemann
Frequent Advisor

Re: hp-ux pam/kerberos authenication to AD without modifying the AD schema

Geoff --
general (login) authenication; specifically, ssh (e.g., ssh -l windowsaccount unixorlinuxhost)
Steven E. Protter
Exalted Contributor

Re: hp-ux pam/kerberos authenication to AD without modifying the AD schema

Peter Heinemann
Frequent Advisor

Re: hp-ux pam/kerberos authenication to AD without modifying the AD schema

Turns out there is a way to do the mapping -- one of our folk found it and got it to work today. Here's his writeup:

I successfully configured the PAM_NTLM to authenticate to the AD domain. I believe PAM_NTLM is specific to HP-UX, so a parallel solution for Linux would still need to be considered. PAM_NTLM was already installed on the test server I was working on.

High-level overview:
- A user account must be created on the HP-UX server which must be <= 8 characters (ie 'caldwell').

- A password must be set on this account for SSH to work, though this is not the case for telnet.

- A [HP-UX <-> AD] mapping file must be updated to associate a specific HP-UX account with a specific Active Directory user. The location of this mapping file is configured in smb.conf. In the test server, it's set to /etc/opt/cifsclient/pam/domain_user.map. The following is the entry in domain_user.map which is used to map my 'unix' account to domain\adaccount, e.g:

uxname = \\domain\\longeradname

He adds the following note:

Because of the way PAM would be configured ('sufficient' for pam_ntlm and 'required' for pam_unix) the PAM_NTLM module will give up after three unsuccessful password attempts, after which PAM sends the request to the next module in the stack - PAM_UNIX - to process the authentication request. In short, this means that one will still be able to authenticate using their HP-UX password if NTLM fails three times.
Peter Heinemann
Frequent Advisor

Re: hp-ux pam/kerberos authenication to AD without modifying the AD schema

One (very important) update, for anyone else considering this approach. Summary below from a long exchange w/ HP engineering.
Quote:

"after the 3.71 ssh software the "ChallengeResponseAuthentication" code was modified. They [WTEC] believe if you upgrade to a later version like 4.20 (which is something they would support since 3.71 is a older version) [you should ] change the sshd_config to indicate ChallengeResponseAuthentication no ( you will need to uncomment this since it is commented out in your sshd_config file and change to no)"